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Guest blogging

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Don Brady, the winemaker at Paso Robles’ Robert Hall Winery, is something of a legend in Texas. He worked for three of the state’s best-known producers before going to California, where he has become one of the best winemakers there.

Brady is also, for some reason, not as well known as he should be. His wines not only offer value – the $10 rose, the $15 sauvignon blanc, and the $15 Rhone de Robles red blend are revelations in a world of over-priced, cute label plonk – but they reflect the terroir of his part of Paso Robles without concern for scores or ratings. Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay: I once voted to give his 14 1/2 percent, oaked viogner a gold medal, and regular visitors know how I feel about high alcohol, over-oaked wine.

We talked about Don’s start in Texas, his approach to winemaking, and how he manages to make such wonderful wines. Click here to download or stream the podcast, which is about 19 minutes long and takes up 18 1/2 megabytes. One caveat: Skype didn’t cooperate the way it usually does, and there is a hum in certain parts of the recording.

Tim McNally hosts a wine radio show, writes extensively about wine, and judges some of the most important wine competitions in the world. In other words, he knows more than most of us about the wine business — and is more than happy to share. Or, as Tim says about our tendency to drink specific wines because we're told they're good: "If wine doesn't give you great pleasure, then don't drink it."

Tim and I talked about wine intimidation and how to overcome it, the changes in the wine business and especially in the quality of cheap wine, and he even called me out once or twice. Can't get a better guest than that.

We talk about the conference's history, what we'll be doing in Denver during the conference, including the seminars and Nomacorc-Colorado Twitter Taste-off, and discuss the respect that local wine has earned over the past four or five years. And we give ticket information; those of you who want to come should pay attention, since we're selling them faster than ever and headed for a sellout.

We also touch briefly on how old we are and the difficulty each of us has with drinking wine and tweeting at the same time. And Dave has to remind me to give the hash tags for the Twitter Taste-off. You can tell I'm firmly part of this social media thing.